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Built places/spaces have long been sites for civic conversations and the engagement of citizens to exercise their rights to celebrate, protest and bear witness. Two basic propositions concerning civic conversations, collective interests, as well as rights and obligations of citizens are offered. Planners are encouraged to promote places/spaces for civic conversations as important elements to promote decent societies. Civic conversations are part of the broader milieu in which citizens conduct their lives, and the comments by Taylor on the malaise of modernity is suggested as a challenging contemporary context for planners as they seek to provide places/spaces for citizens to express opinions about the world. We also offer brief comments about citizenship, which provide further contextual material for an understanding of the planning of places/spaces. It is suggested that planners need to find creative ways to provide access to virtual places/spaces from physical places/spaces so that recent trends in technology using the Internet can complement the traditional public sites where citizens congregate. Issues relating to spaces of technological citizenship as virtual places/spaces for civic conversations are identified. Can such initiatives engender active civic conversations, and new roles for citizens to influence outcomes on the quality of life? Finally, we explore the difficulties of reconciling imperatives regarding rights and obligations, and to regulating and planning places/spaces, so that all citizens will be encouraged to engage in civic conversations to tackle collective and individual needs and wants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism is a major economic activity with significant social, political and environmental repercussions that affect people and places in virtually every corner of the contemporary world. This study focuses on tourism development in Puerto Vallarta (PV), Jalisco, Mexico. The region has been almost completely transformed by this industry in a relatively short period of time since the development of the first major hotel in 1948. The article begins by discussing the development of PV as a place, as a coastal tourist resort and also as a set of quite different cultural landscapes. Building on this we specifically identify, describe and discuss some of the major cultural imprints of tourism upon PV, including hotels, restaurants, the gay community, art galleries and Internet cafes as well as ecological imprints of [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1995 the Progressive Conservative Party (PC) defeated the New Democratic Party (NDP) to form the government in the province of Ontario, Canada. These parties represent different positions regarding the management, regulation and control of environmental affairs. The effects of provincial legislation on the environment are typically felt at the local level and hence we argue that this study has relevance for those interested in local environments. One policy paper regarding the environment for each party is analysed using a formal discourse analysis technique called textual analysis computing tools (TACT). The rationale for using TACT is included, as is a brief commentary on previous studies that have used discourse analysis to examine environmental issues. The results of the analysis indicate the different ways that the NDP and the PC express their philosophical positions as applied to environmental policy making in Ontario. The shift in 1995 from the social democratic and interventionist stance of the NDP with respect to environmental policy making toward the more corporate, free-market privatisation regime of the PC is demonstrated. Close attention is paid in the discourse analysis to the use of words like 'cost', 'economy' and 'environment' in the two documents analysed. The use of language in a government position paper creates meaning and significance to citizens in the context of their local environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a Past-President's address on the geographical perspectives on the public good based on the case of the community called Field in British Columbia. Definition of public, good and public good; View on the project on conditions of the Civic State; Evaluation of the success efforts of the community to secure public good using the competing values framework.

Reviews the computer software Evaluation of Alternate Proposals developed by New Alternatives Inc.

The discussion about nonsustainable ecological systems is in vogue. The debate has led to the biophysical analysis of "human-nature" relationships. This analysis is an important way to determine human impacts on the Earth, based on the colonization of nature and social activities that consider matter and energy flows through appropriation, transformation, distribution, consumption, and excretion. Tourism has appropriated and characterized various types of ecosystems that represent the use of a finite set of spatially distributed resources. The observation of marine mammals, such as whales, in natural protected areas attracts many tourists each year, and this activity indirectly generates carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere. This carbon emission, which is accompanied by the increased scale of tourism, may hamper global conservation goals. We describe the use of the Ecological Footprint tool as a sustainability indicator of humpback whale-watching activity in Bahía de Banderas, Marietas Islands National Park, in Nayarit, México, to examine the global impact of this tourist activity on ecosystems. Calculations are based on the Ecological Footprint method using the consumption/productivity ratio--converting costs of goods and services into consumption of resource inputs and then translating these to surface units. The findings show that the mean whale-watching footprint in the study area is 46.85 ha. This figure is low when compared to other estimated footprints of ecotourism activities in the world. The discussion examines how the results of this type of analysis can be used to improve tourism planning with a view to promoting sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]